Our collective vote for the most incomprehensible Chinese we've ever heard still goes to whatever that farmer selling miniature Terracotta statues was speaking the day we stopped by Qin Shihuang's tomb in Xi'an. And compared to that, the Sichuanese accent is delightful and funny and amazingly comprehensible. And it's actually so very *almost* mandarin that - had history turned but slightly differently in 1955 - we would all be speaking it today.

Learning Chinese? Our advanced shows at Popup Chinese are entirely in native level Chinese. So you should be fluent at communicative Chinese if you hope to make much sense of them. And our show this time is all about the Sichuanese accent. We had a good time recording this show, so if you're looking to pass yourself off as a southwesterner or just want to pick up some Sichuanese slang to impress or confuse the relatives, take a listen. We hope you enjoy the show.

The new CSK test lounged in its over-sized hammock, soaking in the last few tropical rays of the setting sun. As it basked in the glow of the last clear-blue sky it would see this season before it boarded a charter from Sanya back to its misty hometown nestled snugly between the shores of the Jialing and Yangtze, a stray thought pricked at the back of its mind and leisurely made its way into the pit of its portly belly. While a part of it was anxiously awaiting scaling the famed "South Mountain" and cracking open a cold one while dipping its chopsticks into a steaming cauldron overflowing with a boiling concoction of fiery peppers and Sichuan prickly ash and fishing out the last bit of maodu and yachang while washing it down with the last cold swig of Laoshancheng, it was dreading once again dealing with hundred meter long lines of students who had come from the four corners of the globe to take the only test in the world that could possibly give one the credentials needed to make eyes at a Chongqing "spicy-sister", or order a diminutive "bang-bang" to carry a four-hundred pound refrigerator up 32 flights of stairs for a swift five kuai, or to clink glasses with a local Chongqing KTV overlord.

Today Popup Chong-lese proudly presents the first of our series of practice tests to prepare you to sit the world-renowned CSK exam. Each question is worth 2 points, and in the actual 重语水平考试 testing environment you will have only three and two-eighteenth seconds to answer each question, so sharpen your ear-drums, good luck in your practice and, may the 气 be with you.

Jian Da Hu gripped his wooden pole tightly as he made his way up the steep grades in the mountain city he called home. The smartly dressed blowhard foreigner behind him barked orders in some foreign tongue that he had no hope of comprehending even one utterance of.

Luckily his nimble legs and strong back had made him one of the most hotly in-demand "bang bangs" in the city. However, this back-breaking toil was beginning to wear on his spirit and, through his own dripping sweat and panting breath his mind wandered to thoughts of his hope for moving up the ladder of society.

The CSK test.

He had paid over ￥4,000 yuan for the last time he sat the test and inexplicably failed to pass.

"Is Chongqinghua not my native language?" he thought? How could this be? Were it not for some small nitpicking he would most certainly be guaranteed that cushy position as the head dim sum chef at the local CSC. Where those small details really so imperative?

"In Chongqinghua there is no division of qian bi yin and hou bi yin! No "ng's" here! And how can you fail to realize that, L and N are the same sound in our fair language?" The examiner chided him with an air of critical displeasure.

Besides these small phonetic details, He had even pronounced his own name as Jian Da Hu, much to his wife's chagrin who had repeatedly reminded him, "Don't let your pronunciation be influenced by Mandarin, you must speak standard Chongqinghua if you are to pass. Don't forget, in this exam, your name is called Jian Da Fu!"

Aside from these phonetic imperfections, he had failed to grasp the near infinitesimal shades of meaning of the modal particle 嘛, that were, as the examiner had pointed out, "not dealt with well".

Whatever the reasons were, Jian Da Hu had been handed back and exam paper, minus that one critical component, a crimson red stamp.

"BANG BANG!" a booming voice snapped Jian Da Hu back to his present task at hand. The foreigner shouted words at him in some alien language that he assumed meant go straight into the residential building ahead.

Jian Da Hu clinged to one single prime directive, "next time I absolutely must pass the CSK test!"

Our second Popup Chong-lese test has been released, which, we think for those of you who've been schooled in the subtle nuances of the Chongqing dialect, this should be a piece of cake. For all others, we can only pray...God speed your way.